Survival Antibiotics

Got Survival Antibiotics?

You have a cache of weapons and ammo. You have your bug out bag. You have food and water.

Will Your Demise Be A Sinus Infection?

Survival Antibiotics are a part of my prepper medical supply, and they should be part of yours too. When you think about survival medicine and start to put together your cache of prepper medical supplies you need to consider survival antibiotics an essential part of your kit.
Here’s why…

Everything is OK until it’s not OK. Then, it’s a matter of how prepared you are to make things OK.

It Was Only A Scratch…But That’s All It Takes

For me, it wasn’t OK when I was on the verge of a week-long Army field training exercise. A little scratch on my knuckle had become a swollen, mess of pus after a few days of military style sleep deprivation and poor hygiene. Don’t judge.

I figured out I could get an extra 15 minutes of sleep if I showered only every other day. It was a time that I measured sleep in minutes rather than hours, and this seemed like a solid plan.

As we prepared our gear for inspection, I noticed a red line snaking from the pink scratch up to my forearm that appeared to follow a vein.

A couple of hours later, the angry red line had reached my armpit. Also, by then, I felt like I had a hangover from hell even though I hadn’t had a drink in over a week. I was concerned enough at this point to show my squad leader. After berating me for being too stupid to take care of a mere scratch, and too weak to heal myself, he sent me to sick call.

I received Motrin, a painful shot of antibiotics in the butt, and seven days worth of pills. Within hours, I was limping through a road march, embracing the suck for my FTX. Hooah.

I can only image what would have happened without those antibiotics? Septicemia. Blood poisoning. Death. Most likely, I would be dead now if not for antibiotics. From a scratch on my knuckle!

Antibiotics Changed Life As We Know It

Antibiotics changed medicine and life as we know it. Before Alexander Fleming’s 1928 discovery of penicillin, there were a few options for treatment of bacterial infections.

1. Removal.
You could cut off the limb or cut out that infected pound of flesh. Surgery is probably a bad plan in a SHTF world without that sterile O.R. not to mention the actual surgeon.

2. Natural remedies.
You could cover it with a natural poultice or use other various natural resources. Natural remedies is an article in itself, possibly a book.  So here is a link to some simple antibacterial poultices.

3. The immune system.
You could wait and see if your immune system destroys the offending germ. The body does a pretty good job of defeating a lot of bugs. That said, the body depends on everything being in good working order. A healthy immune system is well fed, well rested and focused only on the task at hand: Kill that disease! So lots of bed rest.

No foraging or fighting off pillagers. Just heal. Diarrhea, snotty nose, fever, vomiting. These are all part of the body’s attempt to get rid of the germ. Cook the germ. Flush it out.

Each of those things taxes your body, uses more of those valuable resources: Food, water, energy.

That’s the guy in the zombie movie that everyone talks about leaving behind because, “he’s slowing us down, and he probably won’t make it anyhow”.

Development of antibiotics for medical use began in the 1940s, and many illnesses moved from having a prognosis of certain death to a prognosis of 10 days of pill popping as life goes on. Prior to the 1940’s my ominous red line? Not good.

Even today, the death rate for septicemia is around 50%. Bacterial skin infections (mostly staph infections) had a mortality rate of 11%. After the introduction of antibiotics, that death rate fell by 100 fold. I’m no statistician, but that seems like a win.

How about Meningitis without antibiotics? Write your epitaph quickly, before your mind gets cooked.

Please note that a lot of changes in life and medicine occurred at about the same time as the discovery of antibiotics that helped boost the survival rates.

To say that any bacterial infection untreated by antibiotics is a death sentence would be an exaggeration. It would be more realistic to call survival antibiotics one crucial tool in the bag that will help you stay alive.

Other changes that seem so common sense to us now were just becoming the norm in the early 20th century.

• Cleanliness (hand washing, room cleaning, proper garbage disposal, sewage treatment, clean water).
• Vaccinations (antivirus NOT antibacterial).
• Improved food supply
• Improvements in shelter design.

Basic overall Achievements In Public Health.

• Now, what do you think will disappear in our SHTF scenario?
• Will the garbage man still do his rounds?
• Will you take daily showers when life-giving water is scarce?
• When the grid goes down, will your home still be a comfy 68 degrees?
• Will you get your five servings of vegetables a day?

You get the point…things will be much different.

A SHTF world is a pre-antibiotic world.

All of the things that helped improve the average lifespan from mid-forties in the early 20th century to nearly eighty in the early 21st century, sanitation, a steady food supply, a good night’s sleep; they’ll be a thing of the past.

However, one big difference is that antibiotics will still exist.

The question is: Will you have access to them?

The answer will be the same as any other prepper question. If you think ahead, if you prepare for the problem before you have the problem, you’ll be okay.

But First, A Quick Antibiotic Lesson

There are two basic types of antibiotics: Broad spectrum antibiotics andNarrow spectrum antibiotics. Think of it as a frag grenade versus a well-placed sniper shot.

Broad-spectrum antibiotics kill most types of bacteria. Doctors use these antibiotics when they can’t name that dog. If they don’t know what kind of bacteria they need to kill, broad spectrum antibiotics kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.

Broad spectrum antibiotics is a good plan for those people who come into the ER so sick that antibiotics need to be getting to work within minutes and hours.

It’s also a good plan for a layperson who knows that he or she has a bad bacteria but has no clue which bug is trying to kill him or her.

The drawback with these is that your body plays the part of God and has to sort ‘em out. Your body has to deal with a system that doesn’t have good, bad, or ugly bacteria in or on it anymore.

Good bacteria help the skin stay healthy and keep the bad stuff out. Good bacteria live in your gut and break down food so that you can absorb those nutrients. Good bacteria even act as a sort of antibiotic by competing with and crowding out harmful bacteria.

The body has a lot of bacteria that are necessary for you to survive. Broad-spectrum antibiotics kill the good guys and the bad guys.

What can result from wiping out all your bacteria?

• Vaginal yeast infections. Good luck getting cranberry juice and yogurt in the SHTF world.
• Thrush. That’s a yeast infection in your mouth. Yuck.
• Clostridium difficile “C-diff” an opportunist bacteria that grows when the good stuff disappears and causes terrible diarrhea. It kills 29,000 people every year.

All that besides the normal side effects that antibiotics have, like diarrhea (which actually evens out the constipation of a straight MRE diet), rash, and nausea.

Narrow spectrum antibiotics kill just certain bacteria. In cases that the doctor is pretty sure which bacteria needs killed, these are the smart choice.

Narrow spectrum antibiotics will spare your good bacteria and keep you in the fight. I don’t recommend stocking up on these because you’re not very likely to be able to identify your killer germ without some pretty good medical knowledge or a still working WebMD.

There are exceptions. You can research which of these medications might be worth trying for which bacterial infections. Azythromycin, for example is the go to for sinus infections. Did you know that some of your sinuses are separated from your brain by mere millimeters of bony tissue?

You should now be asking:
How do I get survival antibiotics? You know…legally, without lying to my doctor.

Here’s Your Answer To The Survival Antibiotics Problem

The easy answer is FISH ANTIBIOTICS 

If you don’t want to bank on the lifesaving capabilities of a lump of clay, a good fever, and some hope, stock up on fish antibiotics.